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A 2600 Year-old Statue of King Aspelta from Dangeil

In Dangeil on the Nile, about 250km north of Khartoum, NCAM and QSAP Mission19 (British Museum) have been excavating a temple dedicated to Amun during the past years. Over the last months, inscribed fragments of a statue where discovered in the temple that now allow the reconstruction of a formerly half life-sized statue. The statue’s head had already been recovered in 2008.

Now that the inscriptions have been deciphered, it is clear the statue depicts Aspelta, who ruled the empire of Kush between 593 BCE and 568 BCE. Though king Aspelta didn't control Egypt any longer, as some his predecessors had done a century earlier, the inscription calls him nevertheless "King of Upper and Lower Egypt" and the "Beloved of Re-Harakhti" (a form of the Egyptian sun god "Re" associated with the falcon-headed Horus) and adds that Aspelta had been "given all life, stability and dominion forever."

The archaeologists believe that statue was made during the king’s lifetime and erected after his death and put on display somewhere in the forecourt of the temple. It functioned, according to the belief of the ancient worshippers, as an intermediary between them and the realm of the divine.